first couple of days

hello everybody

i am in takamatsu at the moment staying in a traditional looking japanese home which is 2 storeys and very cold. i cant work out how to use caps lock on a jaopanese keyboard but if i could, very would be in caps. also the keyboard is slightly smaller and some buttons are in weird places so excuse the typos

yesterday i went to my host mum, cathy`s friends place in the city to watch her do 茶道　(sadou- tea ceremony) it was really good and tasted declicious and foamy- there was also a 5 yr old girl there with her mum and she was hilarious, the only thing in english she knew was "fish or beef" cos apparently at her preschool they did a role play where they had to pretend to be waiters

the lady who hosted it, mariko, also invited us to a sushi party later in february where shell show me how to make proper sushi- i told my host father earlier that my favourite sushi is kimchee, avocado and sundried tomato and he almost had a heart attack hes like kimchee in sushi???
apparently in japan they have pizza with yaki soba (fried noodles on it which i think is way weirder but hey

the plane trip here i flied jetstar cos i was wanted to save money and i was pleasantly surprised with how good it was, the safety demonstrations were the most comprehensive ive seen so far. inflight entertainment was v.good and i was lucky to sit next to someone who was 19/20 y.o. and going to melbourne uni (hi stan if ur reading this) and we spent like the whole time talking so that was good, were both obsessed with languages and have a social conscience which was good - also an added bonus that i now know someone who lives in melbourne!

im sleeping on a futon atm in a house where all the doors are sliding so its pretty nice and traditional. also my host parents arent too formal so that took a lot of stress of me worrying about how to act- my japanese is abysmal btw. that would also be in caps if i could. liek shockingly embarassingly yr7-level bad. ie i forgot how to say good night last night. being at the tea party was good tho cos they spoke in japanese the whole time which i could understand a lot of , but i guess it will take a bit of time before my level of spoken japanese gets back to what it should be since i havent spoken it since the hsc exam in august

we rode bikes into the city as well yesterday- mum they are so much better than our bikes! like soooo much easier to ride and it was really enjoyable, about a third of the people riding bikes i saw were elderly- japanese ppl are so healthy

it was funny being on the plane, there was a limit of 20kg for luggage and 10kg for onboard so my suitacse was 19.5kg and my backpack was 9.5 and stuffed to the brim, and i was wearing a heavy warm jacket and a ski jacket that must have weighed about 4kg cos all the pocketswere crammed full of stuff in the gold coast. i got stared at alot.

japans pretty goodso far, it feels no different from being at home which is good and takamatsu isnt hilariously overly dense so i dont have to worry abou tbeing claustrophobic

thats all that i can think of to say right now, ill write something else in another few days

sonia
xoxo